ple who are in vegetative states. Until recently, neuroscientists were only able to study the brains of the dead. But in the past twenty years, technological advances have allowed scientists to study the brains of the living. Owen works at the MRC Cognition Brain Science Unit at Cambridge. He has done brain mapping studies for twenty years to understand what portions of the brain were involved in each task performed. Humans are defined by their external behaviors, but scientists such as Owens believe they can reduce an individual’s essence to his or her brain.(read less)

icopter and hang glider. Perhaps the most famous modern example is Velcro, which was designed by a Swiss engineer who was inspired by the cockleburs that he pulled from his dog’s fur. Scientists attempt to extract the principles from animal life. As human technologies take on more of the characteristics of nature, nature becomes a better teacher. It’s called bio-mimicry, or as biologist Robert Full terms it, bio-inspiration – the relatively new scientific practice of studying systems and elements in nature and adapting them to solve modern human problems. This design strategy is not as simple as it sounds. Organisms are not optimally designed, so scientists must study them to extract the general principles that make them successful.(read less)

d, it has evolved. “Land warrior” puts state-of-the-art technology right on the soldier’s body. It is a networked computerized system worn by the soldier. Vital battlefield data is continuously transmitted to the soldier. On combat missions, soldiers are linked together. At the flick of a switch, they can talk to each other, share pictures - all see the same things at the same time, no matter where each individual is. The key components of this system are a radio link, a helmet display, GPS navigation, and a computer. The Land Warrior is envisioned to be used on the urban front line.(read less)

smarter. The computer algorithms really lie at the heart of making robots smart enough to carry out all the tasks that scientists – and eventually customers such as homemakers, will want them to do. Implementing these algorithms often requires that these programmers have a deep understanding both of computer science principles as well as robotic principles – how to move things around, and what different sensor readings are telling the robot about what’s out there in the world. Engineers building robots can often endow them with extra senses which people don’t have – for example a laser scanner that allows the robot to figure out what’s in front of it.(read less)

microscope. This Department of Energy electron microscope, which cost $27 million, can view objects twice as small as the last generation of the world’s most powerful microscopes. The microscope has its own room, and its power cable is as thick as a fire hose. 300,000 volts go up into the gun and the electrons are accelerated up to nearly the speed of light. At that speed, the electrons behave like waves, with very short wave lengths. An electron microscope can make images of much smaller things than light microscopes, because electrons have much shorter wave lengths than light.(read less)

bacterial invasion, and was also sealed in a vacuum-packed plastic bag to keep its tissues hydrated. This baby wooly mammoth is the most perfectly preserved woolly mammoth ever discovered. Scientists have named her Lyuba, and she was a 1-month-old baby that walked the tundra about 40,000 years ago. Now scientists are trying to find out not only why she died, but also everything they can about wooly mammoth morphology. Good resolution of x-ray images is more difficult on dry tissue. In order to keep the body of the baby mammoth cold while being x-rayed, it was placed in a thin wooden capsule. The goal is to create an anatomical map of the interior of the mammoth, to enable scientists where to look in the eventual autopsy, while minimizing damage to the body. The goal is to create the mammoth’s entire body in 3-d.(read less)

e can potentially be used to help people curb addiction, such as for heroin and nicotine, as well. The vaccine acts like a vaccine that fights disease, by stimulating the body to develop antibodies, which bind to the cocaine and prevent it from entering the brain. The vaccine only lasts two months, so booster shots might be needed. There are also concerns that users of cocaine, no longer feeling the effect of the cocaine, might overdose in a continued effort to get high. Much more testing is needed.(read less)

mographies or colonoscopiers. This test can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy cells. Stray cancer cells may mean that a cancer is spreading. If doctors can find spreading cancers early, the treatments that are available today are much more effective. Prior to this test however, most of the “big killer” cancers are found when they are at Stage 3 or Stage 4 – when it is often times too late.(read less)

on thieves – cyber armies of criminals, terrorists and some backed by nation states. In the United States, there is a growing concern that they pose a massive threat to national security, and a conviction that the world military superpower needs to be prepared to win this war. The worst-case scenario is an attack on a country’s network that would take down critical infrastructure – such as power grid; aircraft control system, or one of the country’s critical defense systems. Something like that would paralyze the country, cause loss of life, and cause enormous economic damage, and take a long time to restore. The US government is attacked by hackers over a billion times a day.(read less)

ty. This is called Concentrating Solar Power, or CSP. There are many types of CSP technologies – towers, dishes, linear mirrors and troughs. A parabolic trough is a large mirror, shaped like a giant U. These troughs are connected together in long lines, and track the sun throughout the day. The curved shape of the mirror sends most of the reflected light onto a receiver which is filled with a fluid (oil, molten salt). This super-hot liquid heats water in a heat exchanger and the water turns to steam. The steam goes to a turbine, which spins a generator, which generates electricity. Once the fluid transfers its heat, it is recycled and used over and over.(read less)